GE Vernova Hitachi will invest up to $40 billion to build small modular reactors in Tennessee and Alabama. The announcement came directly from the White House on March 19, 2026, on the sidelines of a meeting between President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. The project targets a total output of 3 GW of electrical capacity, to be generated using the BWRX-300 reactor design.
The nuclear initiative is the third pillar of a $73 billion energy package unveiled during the same summit. The other two components involve gas-fired power plants in Pennsylvania and Texas, backed by $33 billion in Japanese investment. All three projects fall under the second tranche of the broader US-Japan trade and strategic agreement worth $550 billion, signed in late 2025, which reduced tariffs on Japanese imports to 15% in exchange for large-scale investments in American industry.
In Tennessee, the primary candidate site is Clinch River in Oak Ridge, where the Tennessee Valley Authority has already filed a construction permit application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In Alabama, the agreement points to a roughly 1,600-acre site near Hollywood, located about 45 miles east of Huntsville — a location the TVA has long had on its radar for nuclear development. The stated goal is to supply carbon-free electricity to the state’s automotive and aerospace manufacturing sectors, replacing retiring coal-fired generation.
The chosen reactor, the BWRX-300, is a 300 MWe natural-circulation boiling water reactor derived from the ESBWR design developed by GE-Hitachi in the early 2000s. The GE Vernova Hitachi joint venture has been operational since 2007 and is currently engaged in the BWRX-300’s first commercial construction project: Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site in Canada, where work began in May 2025 with a target commercial operation date of 2030. The new US-Japan agreement further expands the reactor’s order book and strengthens the case for industrial standardization across North America.
Energy demand is the key driver behind the initiative. Data centers powering artificial intelligence applications and heavy industry require a stable, dispatchable baseload source that gas alone cannot reliably provide over the long term. The US Department of Commerce described the project as a means to “stabilize energy prices for American consumers” and cement joint US-Japan technological leadership on the global stage. If the Darlington project stays on schedule, the American sites will have a proven operational reference to build on, significantly reducing the uncertainty that typically surrounds first-of-a-kind deployments.
